AMA Recap | DEC. Venture Community
On Jan. 21st 2:00 PM (UTC+0), DEC. Venture held an AMA about Amara in their community. The guest speaker is Rachel, an ambassador in English community. The event was met with an overwhelming response from enthusiasts.
For those who missed the event, here is the recap:
Q1: Please introduce yourself and your team.
A: Hello guys, I am Rachel, an ambassador at Amara Finance.
In Amara team, the core members are mainly from the US and China. Actually we have members around the world. We all understand that the blockchain is borderless so an international team is necessary for the development of our project. Our core members are early code contributors to Polkadot and have rich experience in leading technology companies and blockchain projects, as well as in finance, media and community building.
Q2: We’d like to start off with a short pitch for the people that haven’t yet heard much of Amara Finance. So tell us what Amara Finance is and what it does?
A: I am so excited to share Amara with you.
Amara Finance is a cross-chain financial aggregator for NextDeFi aiming to be the DeFi collaboration center.
Amara Finance has three core products, AmaraLend, AmaraLink and AmaraPay. AmaraLend is a lending protocol about LP liquidity. AmaraLink is a multisig cross-chain bridge based on Chainsafe. AmaraPay is a global payment gateway protocol.
It is known that Amara Finance belongs to Polkadot ecosystem, but Amara also has the desire of multi-chain deployment. Amara’s aim is not only finding a position on Polkadot, but also introducing more assets and users into Polkadot and becoming a multi-chain DeFi collaboration center.
Q3: Do you have the story behind this project? Or can you explain why you choose this name?
A: Glad you ask for the name. Naming a project is a very interesting process. It’s like naming your own baby. We thought about many names, such as Fides, which has the meaning of trust and good faith. Eventually, we chose Amara for its simple structure with “A” at the beginning and end of the word, which also implies the meaning of a top graded project. And more importantly, we would like to continue growing the Amara ecosystem with the blessing of “everlasting” the name brings to us!
Q4: What has been the biggest challenge you have faced in your project development?
A: Amara has faced many challenges during development, including technology, products and the team. But we overcame them one by one and got higher achievements.
Personally, the biggest challenge is the consensus of the team. The team overturned the original product design once and again, just for a better Amara. The road is hard to go but is significant.
For example, our product is for DeFi 1.0, focusing on the lending of long tail assets. But it’s not enough, so we discussed within the team and came up with DeFi 2.0 or AmaraLend v2, focusing on LP‘s autocompound and staking for stablecoin.
An excellent team never fears challenges and has the courage to innovate.
Q5: What objectives are you planning to achieve by the end of 2022 ?
A: The most important is DeFi 2.0, also known as AmaraLend v2 will be launched successfully.
Firstly, it can realize the lending of the stablecoin usdt, usdc, busd, etc. by staking the largest size of LP.
Secondly, it can lend other stablecoin by staking other long tail assets.
Once the two above were achieved, Amara can release its own stablecoin usda.
Of course, besides AmaraLend, our other product AmaraLInk will be launched in the first half of the year 2022.
Q6: What is DeFi2.0? You mention it on your website, how do you define it and how does it differ from DeFi?
A: DeFi 2.0 mainly refers to AmaraLend v2. AmaraLend v2 is Amara’s most creative product.
There are many lending projects in the market at present, and people are keen on imitating and copying projects but few to create because innovation means risk, high cost and energy investment.
AmaraLend has upgraded several times, and finally found its own place in the DeFi world. At first, AmaraLend’s design was very simple, just to be a multi-chain deployment lending platform focusing on long tail assets.
Let’s call it AmaraLend v1. The original AmaraLend v1 is just an ordinary lending product with no much innovation. Therefore, Amara team decided to innovate it. After heated discussion, as well as adopting investor’s suggestions, AmaraLend v2 model came out finally.
AmaraLend v2 is an innovative product. You can see the graphic below.
To sum up, AmaraLend is to release the liquidity of LP.
In the DeFi field, interest-bearing assets like LP are huge in scale, but are called sleeping assets because there is no suitable “place” for them.
For general mining users, LP principal will be locked on DEX after yield farming, which makes the capital utilization rate of LP assets not high.
In AmaraLend v2, users can deposit LP to autocompound module for two advantages.
Firstly, Amara will help users gain higher APY by putting LP to DEX automatically, getting mining reward and autocompounding the reward. Secondly, after depositing LP, users can borrow USDA, stablecoin under Amara algorithm, by staking LP besides autocompound, which creatively releases LP liquidity.
Of course, USDA can be put into the recycling model to get more benefits.
For detailed technology doc of AmaraLend v2, pls refer to our Wiki:
https://amara.gitbook.io/amara-finance/amara-v2-doc
Q7: What were the biggest challenges that you have faced during the development of your product?
Just as I said before, the biggest challenge is the consensus of the team. The team discussed many many times from the very beginning and overturned the original product design once and again, just for a better Amara. You can see our products on the website, they have been modified and upgraded many times to be what they like now. We tried hard to launch an innovative and beneficial product with high security for the users.
Q8: There is a lot of lending platforms already. What are the advantages of using Amara.link?
Thank you for your concern about AmaraLink. We believe that crossing chains will be a must in the future DeFi scenarios and AmaraLink will meet the demand for cross-chain transactions.
Many people joke with us that AmaraLink is like an independent project. And AmaraLink has the highest exposure and got the most awards among all Amara products.
In May 2021, AmaraLink received Polygon grant. In October 2021, AmaraLink gained the third place in Wanxiang Hackathon for 2021 and was recognized as the most potential developer by Moonbeam. AmaraLink is to support AmaraLend by realizing the cross-chain function that fully meets the needs of the actual production.
How to achieve it? Simply speaking, it is common to all cross-chain bridges. Two contracts of one asset will be deployed on two target chains A and B. After depositing the asset into the contract on chain A, the contract on chain A confirms and locks the asset. Receiving the news, the contact on chain B maps the corresponding asset which is also valuable and recognized by chain B. Therefore, it’s not a real asset transfer but a mapping in another chain. This is how AmaraLink works.
According to AmaraLink’s development schedule, it will be launched in February, 2022 and will connect two ecosystems of Polygon and BSC, realizing the cross-chain transfer of “specific assets” between Moonriver and Polygon, BSC. AmaraLink will be deployed on other public chains such as Solana and Harmony based on the progress after its launch.
Q9: You are developing a feature called Amara Pay. Could you please explain how is it going to work, when can we expect it to be released? Is it going to be Q1 as mentioned in roadmap?
A: Thanks for your concern about AmaraPay. To put it bluntly, it is not easy for a technical team to develop three products at the same time. AmaraLend is the most important among the three core products. It is a lending protocol about LP liquidity, which can not only help users achieve higher APY, but also lend USDA(stablecoin under Amara algorithm) by staking LP to fully release LP liquidity. AmaraLink is a multisig cross-chain bridge developed by ourselves, which achieves the cross-chain transfer of specific assets between Moonriver and Polygon, BSC. AmaraLink will become the entrance for users to Polkadot ecosystem.
AmaraPay is a global payment protocol, which is an important supplement to Amara ecosystem.
If you are a user in a compliance area, you can
firstly, buy crypto assets with legal currency in ease and compliance;
secondly, apply for real asset cards or virtual cards to manage crypto assets;
thirdly, achieve offline payment by the crypto assets real-time price in most countries and regions around the world.
It can be said that AmaraPay will open up the boundary between traditional finance and blockchain finance, and achieve low friction and efficient circulation. In the future, crypto assets will be more closely related to our real life. We will use it in our daily lives, not just the speculation in the secondary market.
Q10: What is your go-to market strategy in terms of Amara Pay, are you also going to advertise in real world?
For this question, actually we don’t think too much about it because AmaraPay has lower priority compared to AmaraLend and AmaraLink. Its development will start after the other two products have been completed. So we have no clear market strategy about AmaraPay. Perhaps we may cooperate with other applications, not decided yet. You can expect that.
About Amara Finance
Amara Finance is a cross-chain financial aggregator for NextDeFi aiming to be the DeFi collaboration center to bridge Polkadot and the off-DOT world. Amara’s core products include: AmaraLend, a multi-chain deployed lending protocol focusing on long-tail assets; AmaraLink, a multisig cross-chain bridge connecting Polkadot and off-DOT world; AmaraPay, an aggregated payment gateway protocol responding swiftly across the world.
Follow Us
Webiste：https://www.amara.link/
Discord：https://discord.com/invite/rhkyBmmCBf
Telegram：https://t.me/AmaraFinance
Twitter：https://twitter.com/AmaraFinance
Medium：https://amara-finance.medium.com
E-mail：amarafoundation@amara.finance
